HP Finally Launching LTO-5 Drive ($3,559)

HP is expanding its Linear Tape Open (LTO) technology portfolio with the upgraded HP StorageWorks LTO-5 Ultrium tape drives, which deliver improved data transfer speeds and management capabilities. Available with the HP StorageWorks MSL tape libraries, these new archive solutions enable businesses to better manage information through enhanced data protection, disaster recovery as well as long-term data retention operations.

          
HP StorageWorks LTO-5 Ultrium 3280
               SAS Internal Tape Drive (EH899A)

HP StorageWorks LTO-5 tape solutions improve backup performance and reduce data loss with built-in encryption. This prevents unlawful access in the event of theft or malicious use by encoding data to ensure it is unreadable to unauthorized users. With nearly double the capacity of LTO-4 tape drives and encryption support, HP LTO-5 drives can store more data at a lower cost while meeting data security requirements.

Accelerated growth
The HP StorageWorks LTO-5 tape drive, built with HP LTO-5 Ultrium data cartridges, deliver the following client benefits:

• Improved business performance through faster data backup and retrieval. With a 6-Gigabit per second (Serial Attached SCSI) SAS or 8-Gigabit per second Fibre Channel connection, the tape cartridges store up to three terabytes (TB) of data per cartridge in under three hours. This doubles the performance and requires up to 75 percent less media than previous generations.
• Reduced storage hardware costs with 52 percent lower dollar per gigabyte (GB) pricing of HP LTO-5 Ultrium tape drives compared with previous generations. HP MSL LTO-5 tape libraries also offer a 36 percent lower dollar per gigabyte price over predecessors.
• Greater return on technology investments by easily integrating into existing environments to meet higher capacity or performance requirements. Read and write compatibility is provided with LTO-4 media as well as read compatibility with LTO-3.

Improved manageability
HP LTO-5 tape solutions offer easy-to-use management tools that automate maintenance tasks, providing clients with:

• Improved operational efficiency through the new HP TapeAssure software that proactively monitors the status, performance, utilization and health of drives as well as backup media. The downloadable free software identifies potential errors before they occur to ensure data is always accessible and secure.
• Simplified data backup and recovery with HP StorageWorks MSL tape libraries that automatically backup and consolidate drives through an easy-to-manage network.
• Lowered operational costs as the tape drives’ increased capacity reduces the amount of media, time and human intervention required for daily tape backup.

Enterprise reliability
HP LTO-5 tape solutions reduce the risk and cost of losing important business data by:

• Improving security of both idle and data in transit through hardware-based encryption which increases security by preventing unauthorized data access without impacting backup performance.
• Enhancing data reliability with HP Data Rate Matching (DRM), a feature that matches drive speed with host system speed to keep data streaming at maximum performance levels.
• Reducing tape media deterioration by optimizing data movement on the tape to ensure effective backups at high-duty cycles.

Pricing and availability
The HP StorageWorks LTO-5 tape solutions are currently available with U.S. list prices starting at:

• HP StorageWorks LTO-5 Ultrium tape cartridge $168.50
• HP StorageWorks LTO-5 Ultrium tape drive $3,559
• HP StorageWorks MSL LTO-5 tape library $9,000
• HP StorageWorks Enterprise LTO-5 tape library will be available mid 2010.